


Wild of Branch and Root

by silverr



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Greek and Roman Mythology, Ihmeellinen koivu | The Wonderful Birch-Tree (Fairy Tale), Metamorphoses - Ovid, The Tempest - Shakespeare
Genre: Alternative Perspective, Gen, Illustrations, Magic, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Poetry, Supernatural Elements, Trees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-05-03 13:53:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14570421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverr/pseuds/silverr
Summary: A helpless maiden pursued by a lovesick god, a mother defeated by an envious witch, a helpful spirit imprisoned by a hateful crone—well, that's what the stories have always said happened, so it must be true. Mustn't it?





	Wild of Branch and Root

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wendelah1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wendelah1/gifts).



 

Swift  
as water,  
joyous  
as light,

weaving  
through brambles,  
raucous  
as crows,

tumbling  
through myrtle  
they—

Silence descends.

The others dart away like hares.

A mistake to  
think he would be  
like sunlight,  
gently warming: no,  
he rends the glade, tearing  
open the canopy.  
The forest recoils,  
sears, glows orange.  
crumbles into ash.

He sees her. His radiance  
dims, clouded by greed.

(He will claim—for who doubts the shining brow?—  
that a leaden arrow forced her to deny him  
that he wears the leaves to honor her.)

The truth?  
Chase and capture  
end in sundering and death for the prey.  
She will not let him feast on her corpse.

She plants her feet  
firm,  
holds her arms  
high  
curls her toes  
into the unscorched earth  
calls to the Sister.  
Her toes shatter into roots.  
An eruption of bark  
climbs ankle, calf, knee  
merging her thighs  
numbing her skin.  
The flesh melts from her hands  
bone becomes twig  
an agony of leaves bursts from her fingertips  
as her lips seal, escaping his mouth.  
As the bark closes over her eyes  
his astonished frown is the last thing she sees  
as his godhood stabs at her trunk.

Her only regret  
is that she can no longer laugh.

He can think what he likes  
mistake her wind-tossed branches  
for maidenly surrender,  
for divine victory.  
He can command horses of fire  
send death from his golden bow  
unmake the walls of the shining city  
in less than a hour  
but he cannot  
will not  
will never  
touch her.

He tears sprigs from her branches  
false proof of his conquest.  
No matter: she will grow more.  
She will offer her dark-eyed berries to the sparrows  
and at night, when the moon  
comforts her leaves with silver  
she will step from her refuge  
and with her bloody, broken arms  
she will embrace her sisters  
and, godless, dance.

 

They so often unfairly blame a witch  
but this time, it truly was a witch.  
_Spit on the knife, spit in the sheath_  
_run between my legs, black wool_  
she'd said, and just like that  
I was a sheep,  
and she had my face.  
(Had I known it was coming, I could have  
climbed a different hill, worn a charm  
stayed home with my daughter  
waited for the sheep to come home on her own.)  
I didn't know.  
We never know the pattern being woven:  
one moment you have the milk-jug in your hands  
the next, there is a crash, and the thirsty floor is drinking a star.

I don't remember much  
about being a sheep  
other than trotting home, led by a rope  
my thoughts like boiled turnips.  
  
My husband didn't notice the change  
but then, it's not every day  
that your spouse comes home as livestock.  
My daughter, clever lamb, _she_ knew  
she ran from the imposter,  
and buried her face in my neck.  
The sight of her sweet face  
cleared the mutton from my thoughts.  
My sheep's tongue was not adequate  
to express myself: all I could do was bleat  
and nuzzle her hand, frustrated that I couldn't tell her  
that I hoped that when she grew up  
she would find someone who would truly see her  
even if she had been turned into a bird, or a deer.

The smell of sweet grass in the meadow  
kept trying to fog my thoughts,  
but I held on to my anger: I would not forget  
how it felt to comb my daughter's hair,  
or sing to her when she was frightened  
or teach her how to be clever and brave and kind.  
I kicked at the fence, and butted the gate.  
If I escaped, I could find a kinder witch to change me back.

You know what happened next.

My dear, stupid husband, the father of my child  
let the witch talk him into slitting my throat  
so that she could make me into stew.  
I thought that was the end, but then  
I woke, a seed surrounded by bones.  
I unfurled in darkness  
blind, seeking wetness, food  
struggling to lift a too-heavy head  
above a too-slender neck  
a clenched green fist  
straining through the soil  
toward the warmth above  
encouraged by sun and rain  
_(mater, pater)_  
braced by my roots  
_(wider, deeper)_  
I grew

Before I woke in this field  
I thought I understood patience, joy, strength  
but once I found the bliss of spread branches,  
I realized I had understood nothing.  
Being a sheep had made me angry  
about what had been taken from me;  
being a tree made me grateful for what I still had.

Seasons passed, leaves fell.  
I never stopped listening for the sound of her voice.  
When she found me, her thin arms hugged my trunk.  
I taught her the slow song of wind-in-branches  
and wished I had come back as a pear-tree  
so that I could drop luscious fruit for her.

She took my fallen branches for a broom  
and from the corner, I listened.

The witch had her own daughter now  
a hemlock child, splotchy and resentful.  
Mine is tossed aside as midden-trash,  
not even good enough for the soup-pot.  
No matter: my twigs will sweep  
the barley and flax-seed from the ashes;  
I will sweep the milk spilled upon the hearth.  
I will reach into Saturn’s realm, curling around gold  
and worms bringing pearls from the sea.  
I will tug the threads of the sky, and reel in dresses of silk  
and slippers of glass, and call a horse with a bridle of silver,  
and then, before she leaves me,  
I will give her a comb made of my own heart's-wood,  
and teach her the last of my songs.

 

I should have let him drown.

When we saw the speck on the horizon  
I sent a portion of my magic into the sky;  
hoping it was it the sailors who  
on a storm-lashed night twelve years before  
had tossed me into the surge  
my swollen belly an anchor  
my desperation oars and sail.  
Clawing through brine, foam, sand  
to the rocky, broken shore  
That night I had no breath to spare for curses;  
screams eaten by the gale  
squatting amid kelp and rotting detritus  
I had delivered my jetsam.

But now… if they were returning  
righteously red-faced that I had clung to life  
thinking to hurl me beneath the waves a second time  
they would find that I had learned to curse without breath.

I flew as a sliver of air, swooped low.  
A small ship, hardly more than a canoe  
decrepit timbers, held together by desperation and hope  
(oh well I knew that caulking!)  
low in the water, weighted with ornate chests;  
its cargo a bearded man, richly dressed,  
who cling to a child, barely older than three.

This mystery, delivered from the seam  
where sky met darker blue, intrigued me.  
I coaxed the winds and sea creatures to bring them to my shore  
then soared back to join my greater self.

Ten years and two since I had been  
uprooted from my gentle husband  
cast out for curing those too poor to pay  
forced with my child into desolate exile.  
Those first days, the watery milk from my flat dugs  
was barely enough to nourish either of us.  
I had no snares, no nets, no bow  
no knowledge of the veins and currents  
moving beneath this bitter and flowerless isle;  
and so, never ne'er eager to embrace the grave,  
I dug with my nails in the dirt  
chewing clay and worms alike  
and licked the furrows of the earth  
until She began to open her secrets to me.  
I charmed the spirits of bitter pools and salt cascades  
and those that, knife-like, haunted the sere trees;  
I tamed the sparks that drove the needled wasp  
and bound them to me. With these servants and our labor,  
my son and I carved out a paradise; and it was a paradise,  
not because it was sweet, but because it was ours.

All this the stranger could have shared with us  
the catalogue of the isle's secrets would have been open to him  
but then, as he splashed ashore, in the very cove  
whose rocks in honor of my son's birthplace I had enchanted red  
it seemed the old fool took more care to keep his books dry  
than he did to keep the child's head above the waves.  
The mother cheetah in me wanted to slash his throat, but my cooler half argued  
that he might be addled, knocked askew by hunger, thirst, despair.  
He would reveal his true nature in time, and if he would not serve me as plough  
he could fish for his dinner hence.

I sent my son to greet them, and then  
in the ancient pine that o'erlooked my hut—  
a hag of a tree, bent and twisted as if in agonized concentration  
its bare, ropy roots draped in rivulets across the rocks—  
incanted a knothole, and split the greater part of my power,  
my dominion over tempest and flame, into a second Sycorax,  
leaving behind, like a shed snakeskin, a Sycorax of earth,  
an ancient with a visage of cracked mud.

And then, although freedom is what I treasure most—far better  
to be a ragged queen here than a well-dressed servant elsewhere—  
I poured my airy watery fiery form—or should I say myself—into the tree  
bidding my earthen reflection seal me in, lest I seep forth and be revealed  
before I had observed how the visitor would treat an old woman and a child.  
It greatly pained me to be spooled. threadlike, around the heartwood  
bound by cambium and phloem, cork and bark. The branches shook  
with the chafe of my discontent, but I calmed myself  
with the thought that I need not hide for long.

He was polite, flirtatious even, scattering _prego_ and _grazie_ and _mio tesoro_  
until he saw the peeled-bark spellbook, written in my blood,  
in which I had recorded all I knew; the residence of each spirit  
which elementals could be summoned, which demigods needed appeasing.  
Feigning disinterest in this arcane knowledge, he sweetly asked my son  
to take the poppet Miranda off and amuse her; and then,  
the instant they were gone, this 'honorable' Milanese bashed my skull  
And threw my body down the cliffside. Later he would claim  
that I had fallen—which was true  
insofar as no corpse stands upright.

All this I observed from my wooden prison. Enraged,  
I thought to drop my wooden disguise and allow my wrath to descend.  
But what the earth has placed, the earth must remove.  
I called to the wolves, the bears, the vultures  
but they did not come. I thought to burst the pine  
with boiling sap, or lightning called from the cloudless sky  
but tongueless in my close quarters, I could no more work magic  
than the shattered clay Sycorax melting in the brine.  
I had to watch as the murderous glutton gorged himself on my harvest  
copying out my spells, locking them behind his own secret language,  
before burning them. The bark darkened, resisted, choked him with a foul smoke  
but still he proclaimed the isle his duchy, and my son his slave.  
Over the years, he has so often repeated the story of loathsome Sycorax—  
perished long before his arrival, of course—and of how he had adopted  
the monstrous and ungrateful orphan Caliban,  
that I think he has come to believe his own lies.

No matter. I have had years to plan, here in my narrow prison  
and know that soon the spells he stole from me  
(how long, and how laboriously, it has taken him to master them!)  
will make him powerful enough to free me.  
On that day, I will rid my island of this droning blowfly  
and then, once again, dwell in paradise.

.

.

.

_ © 2018 revised 22 May 2018 _

**Author's Note:**

> Art by [Alice White](mailto:existentialspacecat@gmail.com). The lettering is lowercase SquareCaps, a free typeface with ornate initials.
> 
> Thank you to **pbandjellyfish** and **bulelo** for valuable feedback on early drafts of these poems, and to **Mipeltaja** for researching the Finnish source of the Wondrous Birch Tree story.


End file.
